The Pittsburgh Steelers made one of the best draft picks in team history when they selected DE Aaron Smith in the fourth round of the 1999 NFL Draft, and Smith was a part of two Steelers teams that won the Super Bowl. The lead-up to Super Bowl XL was a week that wasn’t fun for Smith though. In an interview with Rob King for Steelers.com, he described the amount of stress he felt heading into the matchup with the Seattle Seahawks.
“The first one was the most stress I’ve ever felt in my life, to explain it in context to people. This isn’t something I decided I wanted to do when I graduated college. It isn’t something I decided I wanted to do when I was a senior in high school. This was probably, 4, 5, 6 I watched my first Super Bowl and I wanted to win a Super Bowl,” Smith said. “So if you take your entire life’s work and you put it in that one opportunity, that one moment you may never get back? That kind of gives you the context of the internal pressure you place upon yourself. Like, I’ve been doing this for 25-30 years, and this might be the only chance I ever get to make this happen, so yeah, I didn’t enjoy the week of the game.”
Smith said he enjoyed the game, and after getting the win felt the “weight of the world” was off his shoulders. Obviously, for most NFL players, winning a Super Bowl is a dream that dates back to being a kid and something everyone envisions happening growing up. A rare few actually get the opportunity to play in the game, and you never know when that opportunity is going to come again, if it ever does come again. For Smith, it did end up coming a few years later, but leading up to the game, it’s understandable to have a ton of stress because you just don’t know if you’ll ever be able to realize your biggest goal if you don’t win.
Smith said the day after the game it was “back to work,” echoing similar comments made by Troy Polamalu, who said he felt underwhelmed by the first win because the world just kept going but was able to enjoy the celebration of the second Super Bowl victory more. Smith said he was able to enjoy the build-up to the Super Bowl more, although already having one ring surely helped when it came to not putting as much stress on himself ahead of the game.
Smith was a Steelers Hall of Honor inductee in 2023, and with two Super Bowl rings and 44 sacks in 160 games as a 3-4 defensive end, he’s more than deserving of the honor as one of the key cogs of some talented Steelers defenses throughout the 2000s. He also played a role in the Super Bowl XL win, with four total tackles, three of which were solo, so Smith can feel good about the fact that he contributed to the win and achieved his lifelong goal.
Pouring your life’s work into one game is going to cause some measure of stress when you lead up to it, but Smith was able to put that stress aside on game day and enjoy the game and help lead the Steelers to a win. It’s surely one of the highlights of his career
